Bakuman 8

Tsugumi Ohba / Takeshi Obata – Viz – 2011 – 16+ volumes

I couldn’t resist reading the next volume of this right away. I’m enjoying the momentum building towards Muto Ashirogi’s new series… well, towards several new series, by the end of this volume. I couldn’t put it down.

And that’s even considering this volume was mostly a character story volume! Shujin lands in hot water when Kaya finds out that he’s been meeting with Ms. Ko, and to make matters worse, she spots a letter from Shujin’s old high school crush that he overlooked himself. This part’s lengthy, and I actually loved the way the deadbeat characters just let all this stuff happen to them. I also liked the way that they actually did try to explain themselves, except couldn’t explain farther than the fact that they were innocent of any wrongdoing, and asked to be trusted. Of course that didn’t fly, but I thought that it was an interesting spin on how these fights go.

As was the outcome! I don’t really care either way about the event itself, honestly, but I love that it’s another sign that the characters are aging in this series. It’s super-interesting.

Aside from that, I’m liking all the editorial tweaking that’s going on. Obviously Shujin and Saiko are still disagreeing with Miura, but it is interesting how vested they are in the project at this point. The compromises were an unexpected twist in the story, and… I liked all the conflict resolution and problem solving at work here. All of it was utterly fascinating.

Again, I’m not sure if that’s because all of this is genuinely compelling storytelling or because I am a giant manga geek. It could be that it puts the average reader into a coma, especially since they get very technical and are talking about gag manga, something that the English language audience seems to abhor.

On the other hand, I don’t know anything about gag manga, since I very rarely get to read them. I was super excited to learn more about it here.

Also unexpected was the reveal that Jump characters can’t kill humans. I… suspected as much, but man, that spoils a lot of my fun in a handful of other series. But that’s another rule that Death Note broke, isn’t it? And One Piece, come to think of it. But just the one time. And Oda’s sold, like, 260,000,000 volumes of manga. He should be allowed to do whatever he pleases.

This was a review copy provided by Viz.

Bakuman 7

Tsugumi Ohba / Takeshi Obata – Viz – 2011 – 15+ volumes

Again, part of me hates critiquing this series. I’m a little unsure how much is being done intentionally. I mean, I could talk about the weak characters, but one of the plot points is that Shujin writes bad female characters. Can it get any more meta than that? I don’t think so. Worse yet, the cover for volume 15 reminds me a little of Even a Monkey Can Draw Manga. I don’t even know what to make of that comparison.

This volume’s all about new beginnings, and to that effect, they clash with their editor, Miura, and constantly compare him to their old editor. It’s a lengthy disagreement, and well-written since it’s easy to see both sides of the argument. Miura wants Muto Ashirogi to do a comedy manga, since it’s easier to win over reader popularity at a steady rate with that genre, and Shujin is good at writing jokes. But Saiko doesn’t think comedy is their forte, and he and Shujin push hard for a super-dark series. Miura has the extra pressure of being a rookie editor with no successful series under his belt, so he’s trying to rush a comedy series out of Muto Ashirogi. But Muto Ashirogi knows that if they fail a second time, it won’t be as easy to get another series going at Jump, and they want to do one-shots and serious stuff to test the waters before starting a new series. There’s no good way to resolve this disagreement. They reach a pretty decent compromise by the end of the volume via both sides trying to outsmart the other, and I like the way the conflict resolved itself.

I also liked a lot of the character stuff that was happening, admittedly. With Saiko and Miho not so much in this volume, Shujin took center stage. With very little comment, the group graduates from high school and applies and goes to the same college, majoring in the same subject so that they can take the same classes. College is a fallback plan, so they expend very little effort to get in or show up for anything. I like that this was going on in the background, and was a major life choice that the group had to make.

The story also takes a look at Shujin’s relationships. I didn’t think I cared about this, but as background details to the main story, it was interesting stuff. He’s still very casual with his relationship with Kaya. At one point, he mentions that the relationship doesn’t mean very much to him, and Saiko advises him not to break up with her because having her around made the two of them look less gay.

And that’s why Bakuman will never have a real romance in it.

Later, Shujin starts discussing character perspective very regularly with Ms. Ko, since Ms. Ko needs advice on how to write a romance from a male perspective, and Shujin needs advice on how to write girls. They really hit it off, and by the end of the volume, Shujin and Ms. Ko have a pretty healthy working relationship that Shujin elects to hide from Kaya.

Basically, for a manga geek like me, reading this is still pretty gratifying. Once again, the insight into the editorial process here is fascinating, and I loved seeing how the different editors reacted to Muto Ashirogi’s stories, the decision-making process with Miura, and all the other little things that go into making Muto Ashirogi’s manga. I’m still not tired of this, and there’s still lots of ground to cover there. Plus, it’s really hard not to like little touches, such as Nizuma being their biggest fan, stuff like that. It’ll be some time before I’m bored reading Bakuman, and I hope they cover a lot more ground. I’m looking forward to the new beginning next volume. Or maybe it’ll be the volume after that?

This was a review copy provided by Viz.

Bakuman 6

Tsugumi Ohba / Takeshi Obata – Viz – 2011 – 15+ volumes

This series is infuriating! It has a lot of good elements in every book. The plot is super-interesting, and the side characters can be really funny. My favorite in this volume is Hiramaru. Hiramaru is a fellow Jump artist. He hates being a manga artist. Sort of. He is constantly running away from his work, and is hounded twenty-four hours a day by his bitter, angry editor. The editor has every right to berate Hiramaru the way he does, because Hiramaru is like a big child. His editor also occasionally has elaborate schemes that get Hiramaru to keep working for 1-2 weeks at a time before the next scheme has to go into effect. At the beginning of the volume, he randomly shows up at Mashiro’s studio. He sticks around even when questioned about his intentions, then proceeds to tell a long story about how he peed blood and had to go to the doctor. Later, his editor tricks him into buying a Porsche and a fancy apartment so that he has to keep working in order to pay for the tax on his stuff.

And he’s only on a few pages. There’s also a widespread Jump artist boycott, and lots of info about what happens when an artist of a series falls very ill. There’s lots of stuff to like in this volume.

But the characters. The main characters. They’re awful. There’s lots of Miho and Mashiro scenes in this book, and I keep hoping that these two will grow up and reading their interactions won’t be painful. But there’s a good portion of the middle of the book dedicated to advancing their relationship. At least they’re going somewhere, but man… it’s hard to read that stuff. There’s also a Big Issue in this volume that Mashiro basically stands up for. I don’t agree with his viewpoint, and neither do any of the other characters, but for some reason, they let him have his way. They admire his guts. This is a very poor lesson, in my opinion.

It’s really hard to read a series where I hate the characters so much, but love everything else about it. This volume leaves off on an awful cliffhanger, and it makes me want to go to the next volume. I have a feeling all will not be well, but I’m looking forward to the next big thing from Muto Ashirogi.

I also freely admit to liking some of the weird meta-plots this has going on. When the Jump artists go on strike, it’s all newcomers on their first series that refuse to hand in new work. Part of me really wanted them to just say, “You know what? Oda-sensei agreed to join us, too” just to see how that would shake things up. Or failing that, have Ohba and Obata show up in their own series as a popular writer/artist, and join the boycott. That would blow my mind.

This was a review copy provided by Viz.

Bakuman 5

Tsugumi Ohba / Takeshi Obata – Viz – 2011 – 14+ volumes

In all honesty, I take a perverse amount of pleasure in dissecting this series and its plotline. It invites it. Especially now that the characters have been massively downplayed, and all the fun goes into talking about how to make manga better. I love that one moment of dramatic character tension lasted all of one chapter. The characters are terrible, honestly, when they’re not talking about manga, so I’m happy that we are only getting occasional updates about anything else they might be doing.

This volume’s all about rankings, rankings, rankings. Now that Detective Trap is running, Mashiro and Takagi can’t help but be obsessed with its rankings. Chapter after chapter feature Mashiro, Takagi, Nizuma, Miura, and others talking about Detective Trap’s rankings, comparing it to other series, and the implications of the week-by-week rollercoaster ride. Possible strategies for raising the ranking are discussed, as are ways to pander to the readership, how Detective Trap differs from other Shounen Jump series, and why its rankings are so different week to week. I have a hard time believing that it wouldn’t put most English-language readers to sleep in about two pages, but for the hardcore manga nerd in all of us, this is geek porn.

There’s also a chapter about the Shounen Jump New Year’s party. Nothing awesome happens, like a meeting with Eiichiro Oda or anything, but the description of the event itself was still fairly fascinating.

There’s also some discussion about the pressure on Mashiro, who has a full-time job drawing manga while trying to finish his final year of high school and take his college entrance exams. Along with this, we see how assistants are deployed to Jump artists and the specifics of their jobs, but even with three people helping him, Mashiro can’t get more than about three hours of sleep a night.

As I said, there’s not much in the way of character development, which is fine by me. The creepy situation with Azuki is resolved in one drama-filled chapter, which was fine by me. I still don’t like very much about these characters outside their interest in manga creation, so again, the less said on that subject the better.

Still, it’s addictive. I wonder about later volumes, since eventually, certainly it will run out of things to explain. When Muto Ashirogi is reduced to doing the I”s-ish series in Shounen Jump, we’ll know it’s time has come, but until then, I’m along for the ride.

Bakuman 4

Tsugumi Ohba / Takeshi Obata – Viz – 2011 – 12+ volumes

So, I love watching the characters in this series make manga. This volume goes over the Jump editorial process with a fine-toothed comb, and looks at everything from new talent contests to reader surveys, competition among artists, talent from other magazines, the editor hierarchy, and the process the editors actually use to start a new series. Mashiro and Takagi get their chops busted by their editor as if they really did have a series running, and it was a whole lot of fun to see them doing the pseudo-drafts as they were preparing for their first serious contest for Weekly Shounen Jump.

Again, its incredibly fascinating, and this volume has been the most process-oriented part of the story yet. After seeing what all these people go through, and seeing it from the perspective of several different types of editors and artists… it made me want to be an editor really bad, despite my absolute lack of any knowledge not gleaned from a comic book.

And that is why I like that series. I couldn’t put this volume down precisely because I was learning so much, and tie that together with the anticipation of the contest and what appears to be an impending series for Mashiro and Takagi, and you have a really winning volume.

But it’s a shame that Mashiro and Takagi are both still terrible characters. Both are now motivated entirely by “achieving their dreams,” which means being together with their girlfriends (Takagi has linked his success with manga to his escalating relationship with Kaya). Mashiro can barely have a conversation with the girl he wants to date, even still, and Kaya can only cook and act goofy for Mashiro and Takagi. Bah. Also, Mashiro’s girlfriend Miho finishes the volume in some potentially skeevy territory, and I hope the series doesn’t go down that road. The relationships aren’t a huge part of what’s going on, but they’re so badly done that all the momentum crashes and burns every time it comes up, and I hate that this element is so out-of-synch in what is otherwise a pretty great series.

One of the more interesting parts was a page we saw of each of the contestants in the contest that Mashiro and Takagi compete in. The strengths and weaknesses of all four series are discussed at length, and as condensed as the story is on the one page we do see, it’s enough to give the reader an idea of exactly what each of them is like. And Obata really, REALLY nails the individual art styles for each. It’s pretty fun to see him mimicking various “shounen-looking” styles throughout, but these four series in particular are like a labor of love.

At this point, as long as I can keep reading about making manga, I’m in the Bakuman bus for the long haul. It is exceptionally interesting. The characters are… not so much, but as long as their relationships and insane goals don’t get too much page time, I can deal with that. I’m still hoping that they’ll somehow turn into likable people, but that seems unlikely at this point. Surprise me, Bakuman.

This was a review copy provided by Viz.

Bakuman 3

Tsugumi Ohba / Takeshi Obata – Viz – 2011 – 12+ volumes

I like this series. I really do. I think it’s neat to see a bunch of characters who love manga sit around and talk about what makes a manga good. It’s something I do every day, after all, so it’s hard not to feel at least a little bit of affinity for it. Especially when all the criticism is so valid.

Hattori tells Mashiro and Akito what makes a popular battle manga, including a cute girl, a cause the readers can sympathize with, and sadness without making the reader feel like they are being manipulated. Later, Mashiro talks out some valid dynamic points about chapters ending with an unexpected cliche, not letting things get too monotonous, things like that. On one hand, I don’t really want to read about formulaic shounen battle manga, because I’ve read more than one person ever should. On the other hand, hearing them break down the genre for an entire volume is still really, really fascinating. They discuss things I hadn’t thought about, but still recognize as the stuff that boys’ dreams are made of and whatnot.

There’s a great scene where Nizuma draws the eyes of a handful of popular main Jump characters when he talks about the passion in Mashiro’s eyes. It’s something I hadn’t thought of before, but even the eyes of all those characters are distinctive enough that I recognized all of them.

On the other hand, the characters in Bakuman are still not all that interesting. I do like Akito, and I’m fond of all the crazy ideas he comes up with for his manga. I also think he’s the most normal person, which… when that’s one of the good points of a character, it’s kind of sad. I still can’t really wrap my head around Mashiro’s urgent dream of becoming a popular enough artist to have his series animated by the time he’s 19 because otherwise he can never see his sweetheart again since they will have failed to fulfill their dream. Also, it will be a failure if his sweetheart isn’t cast as the voice actress for the lead heroine in the anime. And they are all super-serious about this. I just… I can’t symathize with them. I’m sorry, I can’t. And they don’t really have much personality other than that. I like Mashiro for the way he spews manga statistics like it’s going out of style, but the way he sullenly rejects even the best ideas because they aren’t good enough to become popular and animated by the time he is 19… urgh. Azuki doesn’t have a lot of depth either, and her friend Miyoshi is… well, as Mashiro says, she’s more of what a boy thinks a girl should be like than a real girl.

And don’t get me started on Nizuma. He’s just a completely off-the-wall abnormal genius, who yells and rejects good advice and goes against instructions from professionals and doesn’t know what he’s doing… rude to a fault… I could keep going. I have no idea why anybody takes him seriously. But he probably needs to be there, yes, for Mashiro to learn from.

And that’s what it comes down to. This manga is almost a black comedy, a manga that critiques other manga while still being rather mediocre itself, other than the incredibly valuable advice it offers. I’m pretty sure the boring characters are intentional. I mean, they have to be. There’s no way that anybody could write a line where Mashiro calls for a stereotypical female character and rejects a female stereotype’s offer to write a realistic female character. There are so many meta levels there it blows my mind.

This was a review copy provided by Viz.

Bakuman 1

Tsugumi Ohba / Takeshi Obata – Viz – 2010 – 10+ volumes

So I actually read the second volume of this first, and fell in love with it immediately. I could tell that the first volume would have a lot of material I wasn’t going to be interested in (the Jump editorial processes were what I liked best, and that all starts in volume two), and now that I’ve read it, I’m glad I started with the second.

The only thing I didn’t like about the second volume was the relationship between Mashiro and Azuki. They can’t go out until they’ve both succeeded in highly unlikely professional positions? Mashiro wants to be hugely popular before he turns 18 because after that there’s no point if Azuki can’t do a voice in his anime? Before their respective dreams are fulfilled, the two won’t even talk? Yeah… that’s a little hard for me to swallow. All that has rather elaborate groundwork in this volume that’s even harder to swallow. I get that both characters are shy, but that shy? Really? Also, their relationship happens to parallel another one that they find out about later? Sorry, that’s just too much. It made me lose a lot of respect for Mashiro, because while he is great at everything else, this aspect of his character is so primary and ridiculous that it’s difficult to overlook.

And that’s more or less what this volume is about, setting the relationship between Mashiro and Azuki up as motivation for future volumes. There is a lot about manga, too, but it’s mostly motivational groundwork for what comes later, and I’m more interested in process. I did like all the information about Mashiro’s uncle, who is interesting in that his career was neither a failure nor hugely successful. Every time his name appears, something good comes of it. He’s a great character to have around, which is important now that I like Mashiro so much less.

The best thing about this volume is the working relationship between Mashiro and Takagi. Takagi is a fun, eccentric, and very driven character, and the kick in the pants he gives Mashiro almost made me want to draw manga. His reasoning is very logical and L-like (the Death Note references fly fast and heavy early on), only way less creepy than L. He’s also great at nudging Mashiro and saying just the right thing, and conversely, Mashiro is good at smoothing out his rough edges and saying things that get Takagi thinking. The fact that they get along so well and are such a successful team is wonderful, and even if the manga process stuff wasn’t there, the teamwork between them would be worth reading about.

Also, now I understand why people think this series is sexist. I am the absolute last person that should ever enter any discussion on sexism due to the fact gender roles honestly don’t occur to me, so when I notice something, you have a problem. And, quite frankly, the only thing I am likely to notice is something obvious like “Men have dreams that women will never be able to understand.” That is so blatant as to be hilarious. I want that panel blown up on my wall, especially since it is completely serious and a turning point in the volume. Also, because I was looking for it, I realized that Takagi’s explanation of why Azuki was likable borders on “She’s smart because she knows her place as a woman.”

I didn’t like this first volume, and would have hesitated to pick up the second if I hadn’t read it first. The relationship Mashiro is pursuing is over-explained and silly, and not at all the most interesting part of the story, yet takes the center stage here. I worry that it will come back later to bite me. I’d rather just read about Takagi and Mashiro making manga, and the second volume seems to indicate the story favors that, but now I really need to read the third volume to find out if it’s more about manga or the relationship. Or maybe it takes a turn for some Death Note-style weird. I’d be on board for that, too.

Bakuman 2

Tsugumi Ohba / Takeshi Obata – Viz – 2010 – 10+ volumes

Is it okay to review a series that is itself a critique of Shounen Jump manga? What do I say about it? It doesn’t have a Shounen Jump main character? That it’s not very mainstream? It’s already said all those things for me.

I somehow managed to avoid all the hype for Bakuman. Aside from being vaguely aware that people were excited about it, and reading some time ago that it was the newest series by the Death Note team and may be about manga creation, I pretty much screened everything else out. That worked well for Death Note, which I inhaled in a gigantic 6-volume dose in a very short time. Odds are, if you’re reading this, you know more about this series than I did when I picked this book up.

I still loved it. I had a vague idea that it was kind of like a modern Shounen Jump version of A Drifting Life, and a kind of roman à clef for the writer/artist pair within the first few pages. The latter sticks around in my mind, though it is likely untrue, but it’s not really easy to compare it to A Drifting Life. Basically, we meet up with writer Takagi and artist Mashiro as they are taking their work into Shueisha to be evaluated by a Jump editor. From there, we learn all about what it takes to make a Jump manga. Presumably all of it is true, since Bakuman is running in said magazine. We learn about what the editor is looking for, the process for submitting your story, what kind of contests you go through and where your work winds up from there, what kind of ideas make it and how they are interpreted, the competitive element, the editorial hierarchy and what it takes to finally have a series in Jump.

It’s utterly fascinating, and I learned so much from just this volume. This was an excellent place to enter the story too. It looks like the first volume may have mostly been “inspiration.” I will go back and read it, but all the good stuff seems to be here.

I love both the characters, too. They get along really well, I like the fact they are in high school, and I absolutely love Takagi’s stuck-up personality. I do like that Mashiro is the more realistic of the two, but he’s harder to like. He’s motivated to success by a promise to make his dream real before he’s allowed to date and marry the girl he has a crush on. He starts losing his patience at the end of the volume, and begins to get impatient about serialization and rebelling against an editor who’s been very good to them. Rushing forward doesn’t seem like a good idea, and I feel his heart is in the wrong place when it comes to his work… it’s the only thing I don’t like about it right now. I can see it becoming a source of conflict later on, though, so I can see why his personality had to be at least a little volatile.

Well, the other thing I don’t like about it is that I desperately wish it was about Weekly Shounen Champion and Akita Shoten. After seeing the editorial standards, the screening process, and the competitive element for Shounen Jump, I want to know what determines the rather distinctive, powerful flavor of Champion. It would be a lot funnier, I think. That’s not really a criticism, though, that’s just a wish.

I do love that the series seems to be about Death Note, almost. It can’t be, because Obata was drawing for years before Death Note, but there are so many similarities. A writer/artist team, the fact that they write a more mature story completely unlike anything else in Jump, and the dark and creepy tone of their story. Of course, I also cracked up at the Shounen Jump editor lecturing the boys on creating a more Shounen Jump hero, boys who are themselves Jump heroes that are unlike Jump heroes. It was killing me, but I’m also a huge geek. The Shounen Jump stuff might be less interesting to a casual reader. Then again, is there a casual reader that would pick up a series about making a Shounen Jump manga? Maybe if it was by the guys who did Death Note.

Obata’s artwork is definitely much different in this series than it was in Hikaru no Go, which I read the other day. There were a few gag panels that were difficult for me to believe were drawn by him. His character designs and style are just a bit different too, maybe a little simpler. It suits this series, though, and he still has very distinctive character designs that I enjoy immensely. Also, it’s creeping me out a little bit that the editor looks a little like Ryuk.

Overall, I got a big kick out of this, and it was really fun to read. It’s exciting to read the character’s ups and downs while trying to get their own series, and even more interesting to see how they juggle the workload of manga creation with junior high/high school. I love the dynamic between the two main characters, and I love all the information it provided about Shounen Jump. It’s a little geeky, and I’m sure there will be some who are disappointed it’s not at all like Death Note, but for a big comic nerd like me, there’s no better story.

This was a review copy provided by Viz.